Page 34 of The Evil Twin

She directed the two of us over to the altar and placed one of us on either side, with the mirror between us so we could only see our own reflections. Then she man-handled the others into place, making each of them stand on a particular symbol, then she took her own place.

She’d talked me through the steps, but she mustn’t have had much faith in my memory, because she’d left a bullet point list of what I had to do on the altar as well. That reassured me a bit, anyway.

“It is time,” Althea said, and somewhere from the shadows, a drum began to beat.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I stared into the mirror. The way the candlelight flickered gave the illusion that it wasn’t my reflection that I saw, but hers, then it was mine again, then both of our reflections combined. Either way, we both looked terrified. That was somehow reassuring.

I raised my sword and held it above us, above the mirror, pointing upward. The beating of the drum was almost hypnotic. The flickering light made it seem as if everything was moving around us. The only thing that remained still was the reflection in the mirror.

As one, we reached up and grasped the blade of the sword. It seemed as if our eyes met as the sword cut into our flesh. I wasn’t just looking at my reflection, I was looking through it, through the mirror and into her. I was her. She was me. The blood from our hands dripped down the hilt of the sword. Together, we raised the goblet to catch it.

I didn’t even feel the pain from my hand. I was aware of it, but only vaguely. As the ritual began to take hold, I realized that I didn’t even need Althea’s notes. There was only one way the ritual could proceed from here, and now that it had been set into motion, it was inevitable.

The mirror no longer seemed to exist, not in a physical sense. I didn’t remember taking the lodestone from my pocket, but when I looked down into the goblet, it was inside. As our blood dripped over it, the stone began to glow. It got brighter and brighter, until it was almost unbearable to look at, but still, I couldn’t look away. That light became everything. All that ever was, all that ever would be. All of my life, all of my memories were held inside that light, just as all of Other-me was inside it.

My power came rushing back to me with the force of a freight train. I hadn’t realized just how empty I’d felt without it until it settled over me, making me whole again. But it wasn’t just my power. It had been her power, too, for a while, and it was colored with that sense of her. Just as I’d been able to tell instantly when I’d moved from Tennyson’s side of the wall in the bond to hers, it was tinted in the same way – similar to my own but just a shade darker.

Mrs Spencer had been convinced that I only needed to ascend one more time, to develop my powers again, in order to become the “united being”. If I could become some sort of dark creature, after becoming a werewolf, a magic user, fae, and spirit, I would be this united being, the first. There was a prophecy. Even though I’d scoffed at Althea and Nikolai, I’d seen evidence of it myself, on the walls of that temple that wasn’t quite in this world. And I’d known it myself, deep within my bones. This was the last piece of the puzzle, and now it was falling into place.

Alone, I had been too afraid of my own darkness, but Other-me had embraced hers. Now that we were becoming one, now that I was taking on her darkness as my own, the process had begun. I was becoming a dark creature. But that wasn’t all I would be. All of the power, from all five types of magical beings, I held that power within me, and within me, it became something else. Something other.

After all my power had channeled back into me, things became quiet for a moment. We were still within that light. I could see Other-me opposite me; she was the only other thing within that light. Or maybe I was her, looking at me. It was the same thing. We were looking at ourselves, and we saw everything.

And I knew, suddenly, why she had agreed to do this. It was obvious once I realized. She had been alone her entire life. So incredibly alone. She had seen my memories, looked through my life like flicking through the pages of a book, and it had been filled with love. Even though we’d had the same parents, I had my brothers. I’d had Sam and his family. I had my pack. I had Tennyson. If she became part of me, she could have all that. And she’d never be alone, because we’d be together.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her, just as she said it to me.

I held out my hand, and she held out hers, angry red slashes across the palms. We pressed our hands together, and the moment our palms touched, the world shattered.

At first, I thought it was part of the ritual.

The entire world went dark. I blinked my eyes a few times and realized that there was actually light. I’d just been so blinded by that white light in the ritual that everything else was dim by comparison. We were in the meeting hall, still, and the candlelight still flickered, but the drums had stopped.

“What’s going on?” I said.

The pain from my hand seared through me. How had I not been feeling that this whole time? It felt as if my whole arm might fall off.

I still couldn’t see properly, just shadows moving around. I rubbed at my eyes, but that just made things blurry as well as dark.

“Stay where you are,” Althea called. “The ritual will fail if you move from your positions. Stay on your side of the mirror.”

“Okay,” I called back. “But what’s happening? I can barely see.”

“I think reality is cracking,” she called back. She sounded so calm, as if that wasn’t the most absolutely insane thing anyone could say.

I honestly had no idea how to respond to that.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked, eventually.

She didn’t answer.

“Althea?” I called a bit more urgently.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I can’t move from my place.”

“I’m okay,” Harper called. “Well, bored and cold, but otherwise fine.”

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